New Ideal Year-End Roundup: What You Might Have Missed

As 2018 comes to an end, we wanted to glance back at our first year in print pixels. Since New Ideal launched in April, we’ve brought you incisive articles, video, and audio on current controversies and timeless debates in morality, religion, free speech, foreign policy, politics, and a variety of cultural issues — all from the perspective of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism. We’re excited about what’s next.

American popular culture is filled with pieces that gently mock, satirize and ridicule religion, especially Judeo-Christian beliefs. To cite but three instances, Stephen Colbert’s periodic Late Show conversations with God, the character of Ned Flanders on The Simpsons, and the musical The Book of Mormon. At the same time, religion remains a highly respected force in American society, often regarded as . . . READ ON

Since the founding of the American republic, political discourse has regularly featured paranoid rumors of plots by perceived enemies of the culture (whether Freemasons, Catholics, bankers, Jews, communists, or Muslims) who are thought to be angling for control of key levers of power. In the last twenty years, we have seen such conspiracy rhetoric spread on both sides of the political spectrum. On the political “left,” . . . READ ON

Many fans of Ayn Rand have had the following experience: they read The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, and some (or many) of Rand’s philosophical essays, and her philosophical perspective strikes them as clear, convincing, and even obviously right. This seeming obviousness leads many readers seeking to understand her philosophy, Objectivism, to . . . READ ON

There are hyper-controversial subjects, and there are emotionally charged ones. Then there’s the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is both. And that’s something of an understatement. In my new book, What Justice Demands: America and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, I offer an argument about the essential nature of the conflict, what has fueled it for so long, and America’s stake in it. It’s a vast, complex subject, and naturally there are many . . . READ ON

Brian Amerige is the former Facebook engineer whose internal memo “We Have a Problem with Political Diversity” was leaked in August to the press. “The post went up quietly on Facebook’s internal message board last week,” reported the New York Times at that time, and “it quickly took off inside the social network.” The memo (see full text below), and public reactions to it, became . . . WATCH NOW

All around us are trends dividing Americans — and the world — into opposing camps. “Identity politics,” for example, sorts individuals into groups based on gender, race or sexual orientation, as if such characteristics actually decide one’s political interests. Openly racist groups, some calling for white supremacy, have gained public attention. Internationally, separatist movements agitate for splintering governments while the Trump administration promotes various “us vs. them” policies, such as protective tariffs, giving rise to trade wars. What underlies these trends? Lately I’ve been reading . . . READ ON

The Editors

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In this New Ideal video Q&A session, I respond to a question about Ayn Rand’s ethics from a reader named Sophia, who writes: I am a high school student in 10th grade who has recently become interested in philosophy. . .

ARI’s Onkar Ghate recently gave a wide-ranging interview to The Politics Guys podcast on the enduring appeal of Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism. Host Michael Baranowski spoke with Ghate for almost an hour. . .